


Beat a Path Through Everything

by Lexicon_V



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, the poor choices people make for love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27925144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicon_V/pseuds/Lexicon_V
Summary: Jyn Erso, her parents, and the terrible damage that love inflicts.
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Galen Erso & Jyn Erso, Galen Erso & Lyra Erso, Galen Erso/Lyra Erso, Jyn Erso & Saw Gerrera
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Beat a Path Through Everything

**Author's Note:**

> “...we think of love as a thing that is with strings and is this force for good and then if something bad happens that's not love. I don't know so much about that. I don't know that the Greeks weren't right, I think that they were, that love can beat a path through everything, that it will destroy a lot of things on the way to its objective, which is just its expression of itself. [...] And well, that to me is something worth commenting on in the hopes of undoing a lot of what I perceive as terrible damage. Yet, we talk about love as this benign comfortable force: it is wild." - John Darnielle, commenting on his Mountain Goats song, "Love, Love, Love."

Galen Erso watched his small daughter stuffing toys into a backpack and looking fearfully over her shoulder. He watched his wife speaking in hushed, hurried tones to a man he hardly knew. He imagined them back in Imperial hands. If they weren’t imprisoned or executed, Lyra’s light would be dimmed beyond recognition, replaced with loathing and resentment. Jyn, indoctrinated. Their lives lived entirely under surveillance. 

Gerrera would not get there in time. Only he could give them the running start they needed. 

He loved them, so he sent them away and walked out to meet his fate.

—————————————————-

Lyra Erso looked into her husband’s eyes and saw somber resignation. Not even a flicker of defiance or resistance.

“Galen,” she said, at once beseeching and reproachful. All her fear and desperation packed into one word.

“Go,” he told her, and she knew at once that she would not.

He may have decided to sacrifice himself to save their family, but Lyra knew better. He would be taken, _he would allow himself to be taken_ , and they would weaponize his extraordinary brain. There would be no safe place in the galaxy for her or their daughter with Galen in Imperial hands. 

*

“Trust the Force,” she told Jyn, and hoped her daughter would take from that all the things she had run out of time to say:

_I love you. This is me choosing you, even though it doesn’t feel that way. You will be better off without us, if it comes to that. The whole galaxy might be, in the end._

*

When she held the blaster out in front of her it wavered almost imperceptibly between Orson Krennic and Galen. 

Krennic, the loathsome, condescending blowhard, eternally jealous of her husband’s intellect, eternally looking for ways to exploit it for his own gain. Every cell in her body wanted him dead.

Galen, her true love, the man she’d only narrowly stolen away from the Empire four short (too short, their peaceful family life together had been much, much, too short) years ago. Soft spoken, guileless, trusting.

If she shot Krennic, the Empire would slide someone else in his place. He was merely a cog in a vast machine. They would hunt Galen all the way to Wild Space if they thought he was necessary achieve their ends. Still, they could run. Steal a few more years, maybe.

But if she shot Galen…

They could never torture him, use him, twist his naive brilliance into something violent. If she fired at him, she knew they’d kill her before the blast even landed. But that was fine. That would be better for almost everyone. Maybe. Jyn would be free, irrelevant to the Empire and safely away with Saw. The name Erso dead and forgotten.

Her heart clenched at the thought, the air knocked itself out of her lungs. She had placed herself in an impossible position. She could save her family or she could save the galaxy. Her daughter would be condemned as an orphan, an outlaw, or a hostage no matter what Lyra chose. 

In the end she saved neither and her daughter would be all three in turn. She loved Galen too much. 

She fired at Krennic and all was lost.

————————————————-

There’s nothing Saw Gerrera would not have done for the love of his cause. He had sacrificed everything to it. If any part of him could love anything else, it had died years ago, in another war, with a different girl. Whatever affection he had for the child he raised, whatever pride he felt as he carved her into a weapon, it was nothing compared to his love of justice. 

And whatever anger he felt, knowing this was no place for a child, that no child deserved a life like this, he put it aside with relative ease. Because this was the life she had been given and the only way he could care for her properly was to teach her how to survive it.

And whatever he felt as he left her behind with a knife, a loaded blaster, and a false promise to return… if that made him feel guilty? Or sad? If, for some reason, he thought of her every day, wondering if she hated him, if he had taught her well enough to keep her alive, if she was still fighting, if they would ever meet again… even if all that crossed his mind (everyday, everyday) he wouldn’t dwell on it. He would not regret his choice. 

Because affection, pride, regret- they didn’t matter. There was nothing Saw Gerrera would not do for the love of the cause

———————————————————

To Jyn Erso, love looked like walking away. Love was the scalpel used to cut away any last tender bits of trust. It left her bloody and alone, with gaping holes that closed into twisted scars. 

So, when she crouched before Cassian, guarded and skeptical, and told him, “Trust goes both ways,” she could hardly have anticipated that he would simply look her over, nod, and place his life in her hands. She braced herself for the pivot, the betrayal, the moment he would turn on her. 

And she got it. 

Of course she did. 

His rage-filled eyes, the impassive exterior ripped away as he berated her for her apathy and selfishness, thrust guilt upon her that she once would have taken as her due, but refused to accept anymore.

But then he said, “I believe you.” He offered up the guilty pieces of himself for her to examine, showed her the weight he dragged around with him every day of his life. He welcomed her home and she could only stare back uncomprehendingly.

When he fell, she felt the sharp burn of old scars. It wasn’t his fault (it’s never their fault) but he left in the end just the same.

So, she climbed. 

She climbed for Cassian, because every terrible thing he’d done would not be in vain. It was the only thing she could give to him now.

She climbed for Saw. The man who raised her. She only survived long enough to do this because of him. His dying words implored her to save the Rebellion, and she would.

She climbed for her mother, because the galaxy had forgotten her. Jyn was the only person left who could remember. Lyra’s memory would die with Jyn, and she wasn’t ready to let it go.

She climbed for her father, because his legacy would not be this monster he’d built. She would be his legacy- her victory today and a Rebellion victory tomorrow. 

“I’m Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra.” 

She felt pride in the words for the first time. 

When Cassian reappeared, against all odds, she felt warmth flare in her chest. When he pressed against her in the elevator, ragged and bloody, unflinching as he held her gaze, she wondered if this is what love looked like when it didn’t walk away.

In the seconds before she died, she wished she could have stayed and found out.

*

_Snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above_

_Some moments last forever_

_But some flare out with love, love, love_


End file.
